HappyDays

The contract was always dumb, I disagreed with Beane's decision to give him a pay cut instead of releasing him. But kick return isn't that important, less so now with the most recent rule change.

I hate this for Hines, but it means nothing to our season outlook IMO. I came into the offseason thinking Hines had a good chance of being released.

Chiefs might need to make another mid-season trade for a WR. Toney appears to be less durable than Sammy Watkins.

Yeah I suppose that's fair. Instead of making this thread all about me I'll just move on from this line of conversation. All I'll say is one incident does not make a pattern. My experience scared me straight and I never did anything that stupid again. I'll give Addison the benefit of the doubt until he proves otherwise.

If what I'm imagining is correct, Addison speeding alone on an empty stretch of highway with zero traffic in sight, I don't believe that is actively dangerous to the public. Again though I am biased. Dangerous to himself, absolutely.

What Ruggs did was 1000x worse. He was in the Las Vegas city limits and extremely intoxicated. Sounds like Addison was on an empty stretch of highway in the middle of the night taking a joyride. Stupid, yes, but not actively dangerous to the public. Admittedly I am biased. Dumbest mistake I ever made, I was 20 driving back to Buffalo from Cleveland at 1AM with some friends. Not another car in sight on the I-90. I thought it would be funny to go 120 MPH for a minute. Luckily when the sirens flashed on from the turnabout I had slowed down to 100, so one verbal reaming from the trooper and several thousand dollars later I was able to keep my license. Anyways, I think a lot of young men make a similar mistake. I wouldn't assume anything about Addison's character from this incident.

I remember exactly how good Davis was before he was a full time WR2. I'm fact his rookie season to me was his best, and statistically it was his most efficient. My hope was that we would use this offseason to push him back to his preferred role as the 3rd or 4th WR on the depth chart. Unfortunately that didn't happen.

And yet, the NFL wouldn't exist without the Pegulas of the world fronting hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. I know the new way of thought is that the mega-rich aren't worth their income, but the reality is people with the ability to invest that much capital up front are the foundation of any economy. I don't think only a handful of people in the world could perform the job of an NFL owner, but only a handful can afford it. That handful rightly collects the value of their investment. And ultimately the players are doing just fine, at least the smart ones.

There are a number of ways we could have had enough space left over for Hopkins. It is frustrating to see us make the same mistake as last offseason despite even more evidence that Davis is not ready to be a full time WR2. I have trouble envisioning how our offense is going to fare against more talented offenses in the playoffs. I guess if Allen plays at his ceiling for the entire season and everyone that we brought in this offseason meets their expectations we can overcome an inefficient WR2 but it's a lot to ask.

I am almost positive Hines could have been cut with zero dead cap. That was part of the appeal of trading for him last year, we weren't tied to him beyond 2022. Settle I'm sure had a small dead cap hit, although I can't find his previous contract before the restructure listed on Spotrac or Over The Cap. But certainly those two combined with Poyer would have given us all or almost all the cap space we needed to sign Hopkins. Their replacements are mostly already on the roster. Oliver, Ford, Phillips, and maybe bring back Brandin Bryant. Cook, Harris, and Murray is good enough for me. I'm aware that most of the fanbase was excited for his return. Not me though. Safety is the least important position on defense. As Allen's cap hits grow we can't afford such a luxury as an expensive safety tandem. It just isn't that important. Poyer is getting older too. It was time to move on. More succinctly: The drop off from Poyer to Rapp <<< The drop off from Hopkins to Davis. Really it isn't even close especially when you factor in positional value. Why would I bring up a 2022 signing as something they could have foreseen would impact their ability to sign Hopkins in 2023? If that's the standard, Beane's decision making looks even worse in retrospect. But I'm trying to be fair. Yeah I already addressed this... I'm not pinning those losses solely on Davis. I'm saying that his inefficiency was a major cause of those losses and in Hopkins we had an immediate solution to that inefficiency. You're conflating "I think Davis was a fixable problem" with "I think Davis was the only problem." In your world I guess we shouldn't offer any suggestions for improving some aspect of the team because other flaws would still exist. On the subject of efficiency... With Beane failing to upgrade the biggest problem of our offense last year, his free agency spending this year looks very inefficient. It's too bad because overall I liked the signings he made, but I said at the beginning of the offseason that the whole offseason would be a failure if he didn't definitively add a superior #2 target. I have to stand by what I said. Beane can say whatever he wants publicly about how signing Hopkins is out of his hands because of the salary cap situation. The reality is that it was very much in his hands and he let it slip away. Fingers crossed Kincaid meets my wildest expectations as a rookie.

I looked at the Chiefs salary cap table. No you can't. https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/kansas-city-chiefs/cap/ MVS is the only obvious choice but his dead cap hit is almost equivalent to his cap hit, and they signed him last year. I chose Poyer, Hines, and Settle as my Bills examples because they are all players who were seen as reasonable candidates to cut or let walk heading into the offseason. Beane instead chose to bring them all back. With Hines and Settle he unwisely gave them pay cuts instead of cutting them outright and letting them find out for themselves how poor their market would be. Gabe Davis had critical drops in each of the 3 regular season games we lost last year. Miami he dropped a TD, NYJ he dropped a critical 3rd down and dropped the final 4th and forever bomb, Minnesota I admittedly don't remember his drop but he is recorded as having a drop in that game. If any one of those catches is made, we are likely the #1 seed last year even accounting for everything else that went wrong. Of course there were multiple reasons that we lost games last year, but in Hopkins we had a realistic way of immediately fixing one of those problems. Pointing out other flaws on the team last year adds nothing to the conversation. It's possible we can still get to the Super Bowl with Davis as the #2 target, but such a feat hasn't been accomplished in at least the last 6 seasons.

$12 million in year one. The combined cap hits of Poyer, Settle, and Hines this year is $12,674,000. Or replace any of those 3 players with Neal or Harty to get the same result. Or just 2 of the mentioned players plus a restructure of White or Dawkins. That's the frustrating part. This contract was easily manageable and it would have barely impacted our future cap situation beyond 2023.

In each of the past two seasons, there has been at least one game where a Gabe Davis drop directly led to a loss. One game was the difference in us having the #1 seed both years. My fear is that at the end of this season we will look back and see the same exact outcome because nobody replaced Davis as the #2 target. At this point the realistic options to replace him as the #2 target are Kincaid hitting his stride by November, or trading for someone like Jerry Jeudy or Mike Evans before the trade deadline. If neither of these things happen and Davis is again the default #2 target, that is a major obstacle to overcome to win a Super Bowl.

It's over.

Sometimes I think we get too lost in rankings. Everyone who watched the games last year knows the Bills offense had a ton of unforced errors. Clean up some of those errors and the productivity WILL improve. So saying productivity is not likely to improve is obviously false. It's not about being ranked 3rd or 1st across the whole season, it's about finding ways to win enough games to be the #1 seed and then advance in the playoffs. A lot of times the difference between the #1 seed and the #4 seed is a few critical moments sprinkled over just 2-3 games. Those are the moments where the Bills have fallen short and that isn't going to show up in any kind of statistical analysis.

So the Chiefs relying on Travis Kelce (33), Jerick McKinnon (30), and Joe Thuney (30) was a mistake in your opinion?

Sure it was. Beane openly pursued OBJ at the end of last season and in free agency. He tried to trade for Hopkins, then made him an offer in free agency. Beane wants Davis to be "outright replaced." He just hasn't closed the deal.

The problem is we're counting on some of these players to be more than they've been in recent years. We have to count on Shakir to progress, count on Harty to stay healthy, count on a rookie TE to make a huge impact, and/or count on Sherfield to be more than the last WR on the depth chart. If Hopkins was here any of those things happening would be a nice bonus, not a necessity. As it stands those players are going to determine our offense's floor. If Hopkins was here they would instead determine the ceiling. A bunch of question marks with high risk but also high upside as depth is a great thing. It's counting on them to be more than depth that concerns me.

For a few minutes that night I was certain that we had just witnessed the first live death in an NFL game. The initial reports that they were using an AED sent chills through my body. The training staff deserves every bit of praise they get. A man's heart stopped beating and a mere 6 months later he's back playing professional football. Miraculous... As a side note, many people on this forum would have their experience vastly improved if they used the ignore function. It cuts down on a lot of BS in certain threads if you use it appropriately.

So I will say I very much support the Floyd signing. We need a capable edge across from Rousseau while Von Miller recovers, and someone to keep Basham off the field once Miller is back. I get the desire to go all in on offense, but you can't ignore defense entirely. Spending a modest sum on a more than capable pass rusher was a necessary move IMO. Edge may be the 2nd most important position on the team, or at least equal to or just behind WR. On Poyer I agree. I don't share the excitement that most of the fanbase does on spending critical cap dollars on an aging safety. Despite my appreciation for what he has meant to the team these past few years I was ready to move on. I wish some other team had given him the contract he wanted. We could have Hyde in his final year and Rapp on a cheap contract. I don't need more than that from the safety position... I'm guessing it was kind of the inverse of the Hopkins situation, Beane drew a line in the sand about how much he would be willing to pay Poyer, and when Poyer came crawling back to accept the lowball offer he felt that he had no choice but to re-sign him. It makes me think that maybe Beane should stop obeying his lines in the sand and instead should use his salary cap as efficiently as possible.

What is a recent example of "WR2 by committee" that was successful? There's really no such thing. Somebody has to have the 2nd most receiving targets on the team. Last year it was the highly inefficient Gabe Davis. Having a lot of solid depth behind him doesn't minimize that inefficiency.

Then say that. Don't hide your misevaluation of a player's value under the guise of "he should be willing to take a discount for a playoff team." It's been well established what restructures and/or extensions could be executed to afford Hopkins at his real market value. Beane is pretending that he can't afford more than a couple million per year but that's a lie. For whatever reason Beane has been willing to drastically overpay the Vernon Butlers and Trent Murphys of the world, but not the OBJs and Hopkins. The combined cap hits of Hines, Settle, and Harty this year is $11,569,000. I bet that right there gets you Hopkins, maybe with a Dawkins or White restructure thrown in for good measure. I can almost guarantee you Hopkins' value will exceed the combined value of those players this year. So don't believe Beane when he says "this player is only affordable if he accepts a discount." He has shown through previous contracts that he will pay certain depth caliber players their market rate and then some. Our inability to afford Hopkins within our current salary cap is not just a matter of "oh well, that's the nature of the NFL" like Beane is presenting the situation as. It's a direct outcome of Beane misevaluating various players' values over the years. Sure, this is my last bastion of hope. Jeudy in particular is the one I have my eye on if Denver's season goes the way I think it will. If we don't obtain Hopkins but we ultimately trade for an upgrade at WR2 I am good with that.

They also openly flirted with OBJ near the end of last season, and Beane earlier this offseason in response to a question about Hopkins said something to the effect of "We still haven't closed the door on OBJ either" (before he signed with the Ravens). So yes he clearly understands we need an upgrade at WR2 and he hasn't been shy about admitting it. I don't know how any Bills fan looks at these pursuits and thinks the team is 100% satisfied with Davis. I'm getting tired of Beane's recurring line - "if someone wants to come here and chase a Super Bowl, we would love to have them." The implication being that players like OBJ and Hopkins should accept less than they're worth because our organization is oh so great. It's an excuse that insults both the players and the fans. Von Miller didn't accept a discount. Beane knows what every player is really after. And everyone knows Hopkins is attainable if Beane pulls on the right strings. His public attitude of "oh well, what can we do?" is getting old. But somehow some fans still buy it.